A series of documents released by the US Department of State have revealed how Sweden was pressed to take action against The Pirate Bay. According to US officials, this directly led to law enforcement’s decision to shut down the torrent site more than ten years ago. Sweden, meanwhile, avoided a spot on the feared US Trade Representative’s 301 Watch List.

Inside the Opposition to a Net Neutrality Repeal
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/07/technology/net-neutrality-protests-opposition.html

Hundreds of protests were staged across the country on Thursday in the latest uproar over a repeal of rules ensuring an open internet. The drumbeat of action can in good part be traced back to a yellow Victorian house in this leafy New England city.

The home is the nerve center for Fight for the Future, a scrappy 10-person nonprofit that has helped lead the opposition to the change — even if its effort to protect so-called net neutrality has the longest of odds.

Google and several leading Russian search engines have completely wiped 786 “pirate” sites from their search results. That’s according to telecoms watch Rozcomnadzor, which reports that the search providers delisted the sites after ISPs were ordered by a Moscow court to permanently block them.

Google Wipes 786 Pirate Sites From Search Results
By Andy on November 21, 2017
https://torrentfreak.com/google-wipes-786-pirate-sites-from-search-results-171121/

Authorities in Germany are reporting a huge operation targeting two popular ‘pirate’ forums. Raids were carried out on homes and commercial premises connected to 26 suspects, while data centers in Germany, Spain, Netherlands, San Marino, Switzerland and Canada were searched. Germany has already filed a request with Spain to extradite an assumed ringleader.

News

Thousands of Swedes have received threatening letters in recent weeks, demanding hefty fines for alleged illegal movie downloads from The Pirate Bay and other torrent sites. According to Copyright Professor Sanna Wolk, recipients should ignore the threats and refuse to pay a dime.

YouTube doesn’t have to hand over the IP-addresses of infringing uploaders to a German filmmaker, the Higher Regional Court of Frankfurt has ruled. The Court argues that IP-addresses can not be used to send a written message to people, so under local law the video streaming platform only has to share their email addresses.

Breaking

Sci-Hub, which is regularly referred to as the “Pirate Bay of science,” faces another setback in a US federal court. After the site’s operator failed to respond, the American Chemical Society now requests a default judgment of $4.8 million for alleged copyright infringement. In addition, the publisher wants a broad injunction which would require search engines and ISPs to block the site.

As crackdown on torrent sites continues around the world, people who are pirating TV shows and movies are having to get a little more creative. Cloud storage services such as Google Drive, Dropbox, and Kim Dotcom’s Mega are some of the popular ones that are being used to distribute copyrighted content, according to DMCA takedown requests reviewed by Gadgets 360. Google Drive seems most popular among such users, with nearly five thousand DMCA takedown requests filed by Hollywood studios and other copyright holders just last month.

With Torrent Sites Facing the Heat, Pirates Get Creative With Google Drive and Other Services
http://gadgets.ndtv.com/internet/features/creative-ways-pirates-use-google-drive-google-maps-to-torrent-movies-1745774

What’s interesting though is that while at times pirates upload full movies to Google Drive or other cloud services, in other cases, these Google Drive links are empty and just have a YouTube video embedded.

YouTube videos stream really well even on poor connections, so that makes sense — but YouTube is also easy to search, and pirated files are taken down quickly, so this is surprising, right? It turns out that the pirates found a simple workaround – the videos are simply uploaded as unlisted, so they don’t turn up in search results. The links to these videos are then shared as Google Drive links through discussion forums and other channels so it’s difficult for the content owners to find the videos and get them taken down.

Dropbox, Microsoft’s OneDrive, and Mega are no different from Google Drive in this regard, but the volume of takedown notices suggests they are not being used as widely. While there were more than 4,700 DMCA requests to pull Google Drive links last month, only about 100 requests to pull Mega links were filed during the same period. There were less than a dozen requests pointing to Dropbox and OneDrive each.

So why Google Drive?
It’s very easy to create a Google account, which can then be used to access a plethora of company’s services including Drive and YouTube. Ease of use plays a major part in why people are using Google Drive, says Jon, a resident of Switzerland, whom Gadgets 360 met on a popular piracy discussion board on Reddit.

Google offers 15GB of free Drive storage, while OneDrive and Dropox offer five, and two gigabytes of free storage space respectively.

These Google Drive links, as well as links to those of other cloud storage services, are then shared by people on select subreddits, forums, and Facebook groups.

The most unusual service that is being abused for distributing content that we came across is My Maps. It’s a feature Google introduced in 2007 to enable users to create custom maps. Anyone can visit the My Maps website, and create a custom map by pointing to a location on the map, adding a title, and filling up a description box. Google doesn’t verify what kind of information users are sharing in description, so you can again easily share links to unlisted YouTube streams, or Google Drive files to download. What this means is that people can then share locations on maps, which lead to the pirated movies.

YouTube-MP3, the world’s leading YouTube ripping site, has agreed to shut down indefinitely and hand over its domain to the RIAA. A private settlement agreement, including an undisclosed payment, will end the copyright infringement lawsuit which was filed by several major record labels last year.

With millions of visitors per day, YouTube-MP3.org is one of the most visited websites on the Internet.

The site allows its visitors to convert YouTube videos to MP3 files, which they can then listen to where and whenever they want. The music industry sees such “stream ripping” sites as a serious threat to its revenues, worse than traditional pirate sites.

In an attempt to do something about it, a coalition of record labels, represented by the RIAA, took YouTube-MP3 to court last year.

“Through the promise of illicit delivery of free music, Defendants have attracted millions of users to the [YouTube-MP3] website, which in turn generates advertising revenues for Defendants,” the labels complained.

Today, a year later, both parties have settled their differences. While there haven’t been many updates in the court docket, a recent filing states that both parties have agreed to a settlement.

The details of the deal are not public, but YouTube-MP3 is willing to take all the blame.

Following a tip from Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN, local police have confiscated 245 “pirate” media players. The vendor had previously promised to stop selling the devices but while the boxes disappeared from an online store, they were still available offline.

More and more people are starting to use “fully-loaded” set-top boxes to stream video content directly to their TVs.

Although the media players themselves can be used for perfectly legal means, third-party add-ons turn them into pirate machines, providing access to movies, TV-shows and IPTV channels.

Over the past several years, there has been little enforcement effort on this front. However, this changed earlier this year, when the European Court of Justice ruled that selling devices pre-configured to obtain copyright-infringing content is illegal.

Streaming ‘Pirate’ Video is Illegal, High Court Judge Says
By Andy on March 19, 2017
https://torrentfreak.com/streaming-pirate-video-is-illegal-high-court-judge-says-170319/

When users stream illegal content from an illegal source, rightsholders insist that’s copyright infringement. However, the EU Commission notes that it’s probably not an offense, a stance recently supported by Trading Standards in the UK. Interestingly a High Court judge has just thrown his hat into the ring, stating it’s against the law.